University of Virginia Library

Dear Hal:—My head buzzes like a swarm of
bees. What haven't I done since you left? The Van Arsdels
are all packing up and getting ready to move out, and
of course I have been up making myself generally useful
there. I have been daily call-boy and page to the adorable
Alice. Mem:—That girl is a brick! Didn't use to think
so, but she's sublime! The way she takes things is so
confounded sensible and steady! I respect her—there's
not a bit of nonsense about her now—you'd better believe.
They are all going up to the old paternal farm to spend
the summer with his father, and by Fall there'll be an
arrangement to give him an income (Van Arsdel I mean),
so that they'll have something to go on. They'll take a
house somewhere in New York in the Fall and do fairly;
but think what a change to Alice!

Oh, by the by, Hal, the Whang Doodle has made her
appearance in our parts again. Yesterday as I sat scratching
for dear life, our friend 'Dacia sailed in, cock's feathers
and all, large as life. She was after money, as usual,
but this time it's her book she insisted on my subscribing
for. She informed me that it was destined to regenerate
society, and she wanted five dollars for it. The title is:

THE UNIVERSAL EMPYREAL HARMONIAD,
BEING

An Exposition of the Dual Triplicate
Conglomeration of the Infinite.

There, now, is a book for you.

'Dacia was in high spirits, jaunty as ever, and informed
me that the millenium was a-coming straight along, and
favored me with her views of how they intended to manage
things in the good time.

The great mischief at present, she informs me, lies in
possessive pronouns, which they intend to abolish. There
isn't to be any my or thy. Everybody is to have everything
just the minute they happen to want it, and everybody else
is to let 'em. Marriage is an old effete institution, a relic of
barbarous ages. There is to be no my of husband and wife,
and no my of children. The State is to raise all the children
as they do turnips in great institutions, and they
are to belong to everybody. Love, she informed me, in
those delightful days is to be free as air; everybody to
do exactly as they've a mind to; a privilege she remarked
that she took now as her right. “If I see a man that
pleases me,” said she, “I shall not ask Priest or Levite for
leave to have him.” This was declared with so martial an
air that I shrank a little, but she relieved me by saying,
“You needn't be frightened. I don't want you. You
wouldn't suit me. All I want of you is your money.”
Whereat she came down to business again.

The book she informed me was every word of it dictated
by spirits while she was in the trance state, and was composed
conjointly by Socrates, St. Paul, Ching Ling, and
Jim Crow, representing different races of the earth and
states of progression. From some specimens of the style
which she read to me, I was led to hope that we might
all live as long as possible, if that sort of thing is what
we are coming to after death.

Well, it was all funny and entertaining enough to hear
her go on, but when it came to buying the book and planking
the V, I flunked. Told 'Dacia I couldn't encourage her
in possessive pronouns, that she had no more right to the
book than I had, that truth was a universal birthright, and
so the truths in that book were mine as much as hers, and
as I needed a V more than she did I proposed she should

buy the book of me. She didn't see it in that light, and we
had high words in consequence, and she poured down on me
like a thousand of brick, and so I coolly walked down
stairs, telling her when she had done scolding to shut the
door.

Isn't she a case? The Dominie was up in his den, and
I believe she got at him after I left. How he managed
her I don't know. He won't talk about her. The Dominie
is working like a Trojan, and his family are doing
finely. The kittens are all over his room with as many
capers as the fairies, and I hear him laughing all by himself
at the way they go on. We have looked at a dozen
houses advertised in the paper, but not one yet is the bargain
you want; but we trudge on the quest all our exercise-time
daily. It will turn up yet, I'm convinced, the very
thing you want.

Heigho, Hal, you are a lucky dog. I'm like a lean old nag
out on a common, looking over a fence and seeing you in
clover up to your hat-band. If my kettle only could boil
for two I'd risk about the possessive pronouns. To say the
truth I am tired of I and my, and would like to say we and
our if I dared.

Come home any way and kindle your tent fire, and let a
poor tramp warm himself at it.

Dear Hal:—I promised you a family cat, but I am going
to do better by you. There is a pair of my kittens that
would bring laughter to the cheeks of a dying anchorite.
They are just the craziest specimens of pure jollity that
flesh, blood, and fur could be wrought into. Who wants
a comic opera at a dollar a night when a family cat will
supply eight kittens a year? Nobody seems to have found
out what kittens are for. I do believe these two kittens of
mine would cure the most obstinate hypochondria of mortal
man, and, think of it, I am going to give them to you!

Their names are Whisky and Frisky, and their ways are
past finding out.

The house in which the golden age pastoral is to be
enacted has not yet been found. It is somewhere in fairy
land, and will probably suddenly appear to you as things
used, to, to good knights in enchanted forests.

Jim and I went down to the steamer yesterday to see
Miss Van Arsdel and your cousin off for Europe. They
are part of a very pleasant party that are going together
and seem in high spirits. I find her articles (your cousin's)
take well, and there is an immediate call for more. So far,
good! Stay your month out, my boy, and get all you can
out of it before you come back to the “dem'd horrid grind”
of New York.

Dear Sister:—I am so tired out with packing, and all the
thousand and one things that have to be attended to! You
know mamma is not strong, and now you and Ida are
gone, I am the eldest daughter, and take everything on my
shoulders. Aunt Maria comes here daily, looking like a
hearse, and I really think she depresses mamma as much
by her lugubrious ways as she helps. She positively is a
most provoking person. She assumes with such certainty
that mamma is a fool, and that all that has happened out

of the way comes by some fault of hers, that when she has
been here a day mamma is sure to have a headache. But
I have discovered faculties and strength I never knew I
possessed. I have taken on myself the whole work of separating
the things we are to keep from those which are to
be sold, and those which we are to take into the country
with us, from those which are to be stored in New York
for our return. I don't know what I should have done if
Jim Fellows hadn't been the real considerate friend he is.
Papa is overwhelmed with settling up business matters,
and one wants to save him every care, and Jim has really
been like a brother—looking up a place to store the goods,
finding just the nicest kind of a man to cart them, and
actually coming in and packing for me, till I told him I
knew he must be giving us time that he wanted for himself
—and all this with so much fun and jollification that we
really have had some merry times over it, and quite
shocked Aunt Maria, who insists on maintaining a general
demeanor as if there were a corpse in the house.

One wicked thing about Jim is that he will take her off;
and though I scold him for it, between you and me, Eva,
and in the “buzzom of the family,” as old Mrs. Knabbs
used to say, I must admit that it's a little too funny for
anything. He can make himself look and speak exactly
like her, and breaks out in that way every once in a
while; and if we reprove him, says, “What's the matter?
Who are you thinking of? I wasn't thinking of what
you were.” He is a dreadful rogue, and one can't do anything
with him; but what we should have done without
him, I'm sure I don't know.

Sophie Elmore called the other day, and told me all
about things between her and Sydney. She is sending to
Paris for all her things, and Tullegig's is all in commotion.
They are to be married early in October and go off
for a tour in Europe. You ought to see the gloom on
Aunt Maria's visage when the thing is talked about. If
it had been anybody but the Elmores I think Aunt Maria

could have survived it, but they have been her Mordecai in
the gate all this time, and now she sees them triamphant.
She speaks familiarly about our being ruined, and finally
the other day I told her that I found ruin altogether a
more comfortable thing than I expected, whereat she looked
at me as if I were an abandoned sinner, sighed deeply,
and said nothing. Poor soul! I oughtn't to laugh, but she
does provoke me so I am tempted to revenge myself in a
little quiet fun at her expense.

The other day Jim was telling me about a house he
had been looking at. Aunt Maria listened with a severe
gravity and interposed with, “Of course nobody could live
on that street. Eva would be crazy to think of it. There
isn't a good family within squares of that quarter.”

I said you didn't care for fashion, and she gave me one of
her looks and said, “I trust I sha'n't see Eva in that street;
none but most ordinary people live there.” Only think,
Eva, what if you should live on a street where ordinary
people live? How dreadful!

Well, darling, I can't write more; my hands are dusty
with packing and overhauling, and I am writing now on
the top of a box waiting for the man to cart away the next
load. We are all well, and the girls behave charmingly,
and are just as handy and helpful as they can be, and
mamma says she never knew the comfort of her children
before.

God bless you, dear, and good by,